1. Field of the Invention
The field generally relates to conduits for containing blood flow that replace original or previously replaced conduits, introduced into the body percutaneously and attached, either as free-standing around an occlusion in a artery lumen or as a lining concentrically located in the segment of artery lumen from which an occlusion has been removed or pushed aside by another device. The conduits have commonly used names such as graft tubes, artificial grafts, stent grafts, veins, or tissue engineered vessels (TEV) made from cells of patient's own body.
2. Objects and Advantages
The invention revealed here provides the following unique advantages over and avoids identified disadvantages of prior art:
1. there is no prior art for the alternative configuration of present invention that provides percutaneous placement of a biodegradable spiral support wire, graft tube and circular sutures as a scaffold for a vein or TEV to become free standing after sutured connections have healed into anastomoses and scaffold has biodegraded;2. the prior art for percutaneously placing a plurality of sutures simultaneously to connect free standing or concentric conduits in the body is that of the present inventor and present invention has the advantages of removing a certain device part that the prior art device allows to remain in the body and adjusting graft tube to match size of artery lumen by increasing and decreasing size of a spiral support wire in the body;3. some prior art stent grafts provide a graft tube with internal frame of metal which is permanently increased in size by inflating a balloon in its lumen, an identified disadvantage in that once increased in circumference it cannot be decreased and since under-inflating a stent graft creates gaps between graft and artery wall that can create life-threatening blood clots, stent grafts are typically overinflated by about 20% to avoid clots and this over-inflation contributes to the occlusion growing back—generally around the stent graft ends thus making it no more effective than if it were not used, whereas the invention revealed here has the advantage that the spiral wire support can be increased and decreased in diameter while in artery segment by winding or unwinding spiral to match graft tube and artery circumference throughout segment length thus avoiding disadvantages of both over- and under-sizing;4. other prior art stent graft ends have spikes or hooks that pierce artery wall to hold stent grafts in artery segment, but ends so attached can be moved by pulsing blood and by re-growth of occlusion whereas present device has the advantage of placing circular sutures that securely fasten graft tube ends and artery wall so they cannot move in any direction;5. present device places all sutures simultaneously within one minute whereas a skilled surgeon can place about one suture a minute thus time required to accomplish all suture placement is about 8-12% of time required for manual placement of from 12 to 8 sutures;6. an alternative configuration of the present invention provides a means of slitting diseased artery segment to release graft tube from diseased segment and away from occlusion re-growth. This potential advantage cannot be achieved with spikes or hooks as they do not securely attach ends as do circular sutures;